Maharashtra Congress chief Ashok Chavan has halted the BJP juggernaut in its track, the party’s mouthpiece Saamna said

The Sena won just one seat in the Nanded civic polls, but took digs at the BJP in the Saamna for its defeat.(HT File)

The Shiv Sena on Friday took a dig at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and said the Nanded Waghala Municipal Corporation (NWMC) election results prove that the BJP can indeed be defeated, in its editorial in Saamna.

“The Nanded civic poll results came as a big setback for the BJP, which has been dreaming of Congress-mukt India. The outcome sends a message that the BJP can be defeated,” the Saamna editorial said, even as it admitted that the Sena did not get the response it anticipated from voters.

The editorial equated the BJP’s loss to the drubbing it got at the hands of the Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi in February 2015.

Maharashtra Congress chief Ashok Chavan has put a “speed-breaker” and halted the BJP juggernaut in its track, it said.

The Sena said Chavan has successfully used the BJP’s tactic of using a rebel candidate to win the elections. “The BJP did not have its army to fight the Nanded municipal polls. It gave tickets to turncoats from other parties and failed. Taking a leaf out of the BJP’s book, the Congress gave six tickets to AIMIM turncoats, and all of them won the election,” the editorial added.

The Nanded civic body has been a Congress stronghold for the past two decades. Nanded is the home constituency of Chavan, who is a Member of Parliament.

Last week, during an election rally, Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray attacked Chavan, former Maharashtra chief minister, for his involvement in the Adarsh housing society scam. Why have people been tolerating such an “adarsh” (principled) leader for so long, he asked.